NOTE: on a cluster with HA, the maximum number of VMs per host is 64 and per cluster 2048.

So let’s start to build my test environment.

1. First, I took one of my physical esxi servers. This server simply had 12 cpus, a few network cards (only need one here) and 96GB of memory.

Typical install, then I used the dcui and changed it's ip to 192.168.95.120/24 and called it esxi.vovando.com.

I used:

Product: VMware ESXi 5.5

Release date: February 5, 2015

Patch: ESXi550-201502001

Build: 2456374

2. Then, I connected to my esxi server using the vsphere client from my Windows 8.1. I proceeded to create two new vswitches, called vSwitch2 and vSwitch3. These are internal vswitches, attached to no uplinks. These vswitches eventually were used for the vmotion network and vsan network for the embedded esxi servers.

It is CRITICAL to remember to change Promiscous Mode to ACCEPT to allow for internal communication. These switches had VM networks: vMotion-test and vSan-test.

3. Now, it’s time to create the three embedded esxi servers. Using the vsphere client, I created three identical esxi servers (esxi1 – 192.168.95.131), (esxi2 – 192.168.95.132) and (esxi3 – 192.168.95.133). I gave each embedded esxi server 2 vcpus, 5 gbs of ram and 3 disks. The 3 disks were 4gbs for the boot disk, 10gbs for the ssd disk and 100gbs for the HDD to be used by vsan.

4. After the installation of each of the embedded esxi servers, I changed the disk type of each of the future ssd disks using the esxcli command. Here are the commands:

5. Now, it was time to create the vcenter server. I used the windows-based vcenter server. Ip address that was 192.168.95.130.

7. Connected to the vcenter server with the vsphere client, logged in and I created a datacenter and added the three esxi servers.

8. Using the vsphere client, it was time to create the vmotion network and the vsan network, which can't be created with the vsphere client only.

vmotion

esxi01 – 10.1.0.131

esxi02 – 10.1.0.132

esxi03 – 10.1.0.133

vsan

esxi01 – 10.2.0.131

esxi02 – 10.2.0.132

esxi03 – 10.2.0.133

9. Using the web client (port 9443), create a cluster for vsan and create the disk groups necessary. If you select manual configuration, you need to create three disk groups (one per host) using the fake ssd disk and the fake HDD disk. By the time you are done, you should have a datastore that is roughly 300gb. While creating the cluster, I also enabled DRS (fully automatic) and HA (which uses the vsan network for heartbeats).

After that this Cluster can be used for work.

10. vSan related commands.

#esxcli vsan

Usage: esxcli vsan {cmd} [cmd options]

Available Namespaces:

datastore Commands for VSAN datastore configuration

network Commands for VSAN host network configuration

storage Commands for VSAN physical storage configuration

cluster Commands for VSAN host cluster configuration

faultdomain Commands for VSAN fault domain configuration

maintenancemode Commands for VSAN maintenance mode operation

policy Commands for VSAN storage policy configuration

trace Commands for VSAN trace configuration

#esxcli vsan datastore name get

Name: vsanDatastore

#esxcli vsan network ipv4 add -i vmk2

This VMKernel network interface is already in use. Can't add again. If you want to reconfigure, use 'set' command.